“There is only one woman who has made me wish to end our marriage—and she is in this room. I think I explained that in my letter.”
“There is truly no one else?”
He turned to me. “Dorothea, you do not look well. You still have a dreadful bruise. Please sit down and rest yourself.”
I sat down and waited while he carefully wiped his pen and put it down. “I chose to write to you in order that we should not quarrel further, that you could have some time to reflect on your position without becoming heated. I see by your—vehemence—that I did not succeed.”
“Vehemence! What did you expect? You write that you wish to live apart from me! What wife would find that sentiment consoling—let alone one who loves her husband as much as I love you! And you know I love you, Alfred! I do so very, very much!” I rushed to him and put my arms around his neck. “I’ll do anything—anything—to make things right.”
He ignored my caress. “I fear, Dodo, that it is too late. We were never made for each other from the beginning, and with each year we become more unsuited. Can’t you see that?”
“No! That’s not right. We’ve been happy. We’ve had eight children. I know I haven’t been the wife I should have been, the wife you deserved—but I’ll be different, I promise.”
He took up his pen again. “Well, Dodo, we shall have to see. In the meantime I have a Number to finish. If you will permit me. Whatever the state of our relations, I still have money to earn.” He started to write and I knew he would be deaf from then on to anything I said.
What was I to do? As I looked at him, bent over his desk with such an adamant, grim expression, I remembered all the times when, tired of waiting for him to finish his day’s writing, I’d creep up and kiss him on the back of his neck. And he’d look up and smile, reaching out his quill to tickle me on the nose: What a delicious little nose! And what a very naughty Princess Pug it is to have such a nose on its face! And he’d take me on his lap and kiss me so ardently that I could barely contain my desire for him. To see him now, turned away, so composed, so indifferent to my feelings, made me almost insane. And sometimes over the following weeks, in my own room, in the dark hours of the night, I swear I was insane. Several times on waking, I found the bedsheets torn from my bed, pillows emptied of their feathers, clothes thrown from their drawers. And, once, I know, I raised my fist to shatter a looking glass that showed me all too clearly my fat and ugly face. At some juncture, in my most desperate straits, I attempted terrible bargains with the Almighty. I asked myself what—or whom—I would sacrifice to keep my husband’s love. I would bend over Fanny as she slept, and think I could bear her loss if Alfred would only stand beside me at her grave, and weep once more on my bosom. And when Fanny prospered and was spared and I thought a greater sacrifice was needed, I mentally delivered up, one by one, Louisa, Alfie, Eddie, Georgie, and Kitty. I would have sacrificed any of them to have Alfred love me again.
These were dreadful, wicked, murderous thoughts, and now I am utterly ashamed of myself for having them. I can only plead that I was so disturbed in my reasoning that I truly did not know what I was doing. And my confusion was not confined to my private actions: I made a public spectacle of myself, too. I made remarks at the supper table; I indicated that I was a Wronged Woman and he a Beast, and ran out more than once in tears.
In desperation, I tried to revive our secret habit of correspondence by hiding affectionate notes in his waistcoat pocket, using our old pet names of Princess Pug and Mr. Merrylegs—but he pulled the papers out with a frown and, after a brief glance, threw them in the fire. I realized then that it was no use attempting to charm him; I no longer had the grace or beauty to play the coquette. So I appealed in a more sober vein, promising in future never to question anything more that he said or did. I would curb my unnatural jealousy, I said. I would get up early and put on sensible gowns; I would dress my hair neatly in the old way he always liked; and make sure my hairpins did not fall into my soup. I would host dinners every night and learn all about the Irish Question and Cemetery Reform. In fact, I’d do anything he wished as long as we could stay together. “What I wish is for you to sign the agreement,” he replied. “That is the best thing you can do for me and for our children. We must separate, Dorothea, and that is that.”
In the end, what else could I do? Staying as we were—under the same roof, but so far apart in every other way—was an agony. In the end, I persuaded myself that if by signing I could please him and see that wonderful smile light up his face, then I would do it. Of course, I did not know what the separation would mean. I was an innocent in the matter, and had no inkling that I would be packed off in disgrace to lodgings while my husband and children continued to live so snugly in our matrimonial home with my sister. O’Rourke was against my putting my name to anything (You will lose by it, Dodo, sure as eggs is eggs!) but the lawyers assured me I would be well provided for, and Sissy urged me on. “You will be very comfortable,” she said. “You will be able to do entirely as you please. The children will be able to visit you. Your life will be hardly different from what it is now—except that you will be your own mistress. Surely, Dodo, you must see this is the best way. This continual bickering is not good for Alfred, nor for you, and certainly not for the children.”
So I gave in. I suppose I hoped against hope that it would be a thing of short duration, that his amorous obsession with Miss Ricketts would be over in time, and he would come back to me as he always had. In the interim I thought things would go on much as before. Even at that late stage, I didn’t realize how very much my life would change, how much public humiliation I would have to endure, how Sissy’s words of reassurance were empty and untrue.
But I had not expected the public announcement. Alfred had come to me in an offhand fashion asking if I would agree to a “statement of our positions,” saying it would save us both embarrassment if the situation were clear and we did not have to explain ourselves over and over again. I did not like his penchant for living our lives in public, and had hoped we could do the thing quietly—but he said misleading rumors were already abroad and they would damage his reputation unless scotched. So I’d agreed. Two days later, the statement appeared. It was very prominent, bordered in black. It said that Mr. Alfred Gibson was obliged to announce that, after many years of unhappiness due to incompatibility of temperament, he and Mrs. Gibson had decided to live apart. It went on: The children will remain with their father as, owing to incapacity, Mrs. Gibson has become increasingly unable to carry out her maternal responsibilities, which have largely fallen upon the shoulders of her husband and sister. Because of failures in her health and disposition, Mrs. Gibson is unable to meet her children’s needs. She has thus given up the right to be called Mother, and regretfully—but Mr. Gibson is obliged to say it—to be called Wife.
I always say my feelings for Alfred have never changed, but I think they hardened more than a little when I read that. “Why has he said those terrible things?” I asked O’Rourke. “I am going, am I not? I am doing what he wanted. I am leaving my home and my children. Why does he need to take my reputation, too?”
“I am afraid, Dodo,” said O’Rourke sadly, “that it is in order to preserve his own.”
“But is that not cowardly?” I could hardly believe Alfred could behave this way.
O’Rourke shrugged his shoulders. “Poor Alfred is like a cuttlefish. When in danger, he attempts to disappear into his own ink.”
Two days later I left my house for the last time. I went out by the side door while it was still dark. My belongings—such as they were—were already in the carriage. No servants were yet up except Bessie (who stood in her nightgown at the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to her face) and John the coachman, who was silent as usual. No other member of the household was awake. Alfred was not at home.
THUS I BEGAN my long period of virtual widowhood. Once settled in my apartment with Wilson, I had no wish to go out into society, or even into the streets. I feared bei
ng recognized and having to endure either pity or blame. And I wished to do nothing that would further incur Alfred’s wrath. I thought the world would come to me, but it did not. I half-expected Alfred every day, but he never came. Neither did Sissy. And although it was written down by the lawyers that the children could visit me at any time, I was grieved to find that they did not do so. There were a few forced letters in the early days and a picture of a battleship from Georgie, then nothing. I had to resign myself to it. Children cannot be forced to love their parents, and if they did not wish to communicate with me, I would have to bear it. After all, I had already let them down in so many ways. Maybe in some inner recess of their hearts they knew I had been ready to barter their lives away.
But one damp summer’s day, three years after my departure, Kitty came knocking at my door, all wide-eyed and trembling—and so grown-up and elegant that I would hardly have recognized her, had she not resembled Alfred so strongly. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me so hard I almost lost my breath. “Mama, dear Mama, I need your help!” I could hardly believe it—Kitty asking for help, and from me!
“It has been dreadful!” she cried, casting herself down in a dramatic way and letting her very beautiful green silk dress spread over the entire sofa. “He has been dreadful! He won’t let me do anything I want!”
“And what is it you want, Kitty dear?”
“Nothing he couldn’t help me with if he chose! Simply to be a real actress. Not a mere amateur in family plays.” She tossed her head about so that her dark ringlets fell prettily around her face and neck.
“An actress! Oh, Kitty—” But her words made me cry out, aghast.
“Now, Mama, don’t start! What could be easier than for the Great Actor–Manager to secure me a part? Remember Two Gentlemen? Remember my Sylvia and how proud he was of me then? For years I’ve longed to do something I could throw my whole soul into.” She breathed heavily, as if her whole soul were actually straining against her bosom. “But will he help me? No!”
“I expect you went about it in your usual headlong way.”
“No, Mama. I know his temperament by now. I waited until he was in a mellow mood. He’d just made up with Michael and the two of them were talking about old times with a bottle of port. When they got round to the plays Papa had acted in, I said, “Why don’t you do Lord Royston’s Daughter again? You could be the father, but this time I could be the daughter! That would be novel, wouldn’t it?” And he refused point blank, saying he didn’t want to see any child of his ‘with rouge on her face, pouting and preening on a public stage.’ And I said, ‘So what does your friend Miss Ricketts do, except wear rouge, and pout and preen—and you think she’s admirable and lovely, don’t you? What’s the difference?’—and he made almost to strike me!”
“Strike you? Kitty, surely not!” I am horrified. He had never lifted a hand against any of our children and thought any man who did so beastly and cowardly. But clearly she had hit home.
“Well, he didn’t do it.” She sat up and straightened her gown. “But you don’t know how he’s been behaving since you’ve been gone. For months he raged about like a bear, daring any of us to say anything about ‘any young lady’ who might be mentioned in connection with him. Then he was all noble and full of praise for Sissy and everything to do with her. Now he’s in the very worst of humors and finding fault all the time. He can’t write—that’s the problem. He can’t write—and we all have to suffer for it. I can’t wait to get away. And with your help, dear, dear Mama, I can. You see”—she hesitated, coloring to her hairline—“I intend to marry Augustus.”
My heart sank. “Augustus Norris?” I had thought that dreadful business was at an end. “But he is so much older than you. And quite the wrong sort. And moreover he is in disgrace with your father.”
“Oh, please listen before you judge him—before you judge us both! Please, Mama! You are my only hope!”
So I listened, and she told me how she had always cared for Augustus since that first night, and how, shortly after the fateful kiss at the piano, he had contrived to have a note delivered to her in which he’d vowed that “Rodrigo would wait for Isabella forever.” And how, after that, they’d managed a clandestine correspondence through the carpenters who built the stage for our summer play—which had kept Kitty buoyed up and cheerful. But after a time, no further notes had come, and Kitty had construed that her childish romance had come to an end. “I supposed I was too young. I was sure he must have found a proper grown-up woman to love. I could bear it, you know, because I had his letters and knew he had cared for me once.”
It made my heart stop to hear her say that, as I thought of Alfred’s letters and how they kept my hopes fresh in spite of everything. “Oh, Kitty!” I said. “My poor dear Kitty.”
“No, Mama.” She jumped up and came to kneel by my chair. “Not poor at all. Because about a year ago I met him by chance in the Bayswater Road, and—well, he only had to bow in that wonderful way of his and all my love for him came back instantly! I told him how grateful I’d been for his intervention in the play: ‘I fell in love with you straightaway, I think.’ And he laughed and said he’d admired me from the moment I’d galloped down the front steps with my hair flying in the wind. ‘You were a spark of light in the gloom I was feeling in those days. I’m inclined to be bored, you see, but you got me out of it. I’ve always remembered your wonderful liveliness. If I went too far in my affection for you, I’m sorry for it. And I’ve paid the penalty. I thought that you had forgotten me—and to tell you the truth, I thought you were better to have done so. Your father was right, you know. You were far too young, far too innocent; left to my own devices, I’d have ruined you.’” Kitty had begged to disagree, and told him how desperately she had wanted to grow up, in order to be his equal. And he had said he was sure she was now more than his equal. At which point she had reached up and kissed him to prove it. And he’d said she was a saucy minx who was far too wicked to be Mr. Popular Morality’s daughter—and they had laughed and found themselves walking together towards Hyde Park. They’d gone in, and strolled around and listened to the band, and had talked together as if they had never been parted.
“I feel I can say what I like with him without having to mind my tongue, or apologize for daring to be alive,” she went on. “And when I told him I wanted to be an actress, he said, ‘Why not? It’s a profession I admire.’”
And so they had continued to meet every time she went for her singing lesson, and had been drawn to each other more with each meeting. And finally he had asked her to marry him, “although I am a roué who doesn’t deserve such a fresh young thing as you.” But as Kitty was not yet twenty-one, she needed Alfred’s permission. “Please say you’ll speak to him! Please say you’ll be on my side.”
“But why should anything I say carry weight with your father? And on the topic of Augustus, moreover? You can’t have forgotten how furious he was?” I couldn’t help thinking that in “taking her side,” she was asking me to go deliberately against Alfred’s wishes—a thing I had not done since the matter of the sovereign given to his mother that day on the Dover cliffs. But I was fearful that if I did not agree to intervene, I might never see my daughter again. And if I am honest, I welcomed an opportunity to write to my husband. Somewhere in my mind was a faint hope that if Alfred and I could resume our correspondence, we might perhaps contrive a reconciliation of our own. Maybe I could see him at least; maybe we could speak and remember how much we’d once loved each other. So, with this hope, and with a good deal more apprehension, I wrote to him, begging his pardon and asking if a compromise could be reached. I reminded him of the long engagement my parents had proposed, and how desperate we ourselves had been, and how we had not waited, but followed our hearts. I thought he would remember our own history and be softened. But his reply was implacable:
Dorothea—I am disappointed that you see fit to encourage Kitty in this tainted and unstable relationship. I think you know only too wel
l—or if you do not, then you have been blind this many a year—how Kitty is both extreme in her attachments and headstrong in pursuing them. You and I both know Kitty to be innocent and romantic, unskilled in charting the deeper and more troubled waters of this existence. You and I both know Augustus to be worldly and dissipated—if not a good deal worse. A very good deal worse. Have you forgotten the man we are talking about? Has the passage of years dulled your faculties? Has he flattered and charmed you into complacency, as he has done so many others?
I cannot believe that you are unable to see that any liaison between them would be entirely to her detriment—and doomed to disappointment and failure; if not a lifetime of regret. Therefore, in attempting to take his part, I can only assume you are affected by the basest of motives: a wish to elevate yourself in your daughter’s affections by setting her against the Father whose only desire is to protect and nurture his most beloved child.
I cannot—and I will not—be Kitty’s gaoler. I cannot—and I will not—clip the wings of her freedom. She knows my views, and the extent of my disapproval of this proposed match, and I hope her affection for me will guide her actions. I would see an equal disapproval on your behalf, Dorothea, as a noble and motherly act; any encouragement, on the contrary, as a measured act of opposition to me.
I hope you will see fit to agree with me in this matter. You and I, of all people, should know the agonies of an ill-matched union.
Alfred.
It was hopeless. Hopeless for me and hopeless for Kitty. “He always has to be right!” said Kitty with a passion. But implacable as his words were on our own account, they aroused many doubts within me regarding Augustus. I suspected Alfred was right. But I couldn’t forget my own history, my own love for a man who was far from my parents’ choice. I could not regret one whit of my life with Alfred, in spite of all the pain it had brought me. In my choice of husband, I had followed my heart; and I had to let Kitty do the same. So I suppressed my fears and let Augustus make himself pleasant to me—more pleasant than he had ever been in those interminable afternoons when he had been a guest in our house. He called upon me several times a week, spoke amusingly—if in rather a louche way—on a variety of topics, and brought me gifts of cake, biscuits, or port wine. And I let myself be convinced that he had changed; that Kitty’s transparent love for him had done what Madeleine Fairbright’s affection had singularly failed to do for Miles Danvers. They would sit together on my old sofa and Augustus would put his arm around her, and Kitty would look at him with such adoration as he talked of their future life together, a life where she would be free to sing and play and do whatever she chose—“especially if it is calculated to annoy the One and Only.”
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